Weekend Wildlifing in Coorg
Friday (14th sept) Afternoon 3.00pm : Jayanth calls me up to ask me if I was free for the weekend and that we should do some wildlifing with his new cam Canon 400D. I was not at all sure since I really didn't want to miss the festival in the city. He calls me up again to tell me that we are going to coorg. Now I had half a minute to get back to him and I ended up saying "Lets do it!". I also called up Lavanya (chinnifrood_atc) and invited her for the trip since she was very keen on doing some wildlifing too. Jayanth somehow managed to get the tickets to Madikeri for 10.30pm on friday. Now that was fast. So we decided to met up at Jayanagar 4th block for a cup of cothas coffee and then push off to Majestic from where we were supposed to board the bus.The bus finally managed to start bangalore at 11.30 pm.
Saturday (15th Sept) 6.30am : Ah.. now we were in Madikeri and trying to figure out the next bus to Bhagamandala. The city was awake and was getting ready for the Ganesh Chaturthi festival. We decided to drop into a restaurant for a coffee. The coffee was so good that we had 2 cups each. Madikeri to Bhagamandala is about 48 kms. So by 8 am we were in Bhagamandala. We did start our birding as soon we landed there because we were invited by the lovely Parakeets,White Cheeked Barbets,Pipets and the Orioles. Then from Bhagamandala we decided to trek and I'm glad we did that.We had some amazing sightings of the Crested Serpent Eagles in flight, Crested Hawk Eagles,Black Drongo and Tailor Birds. All along the way, we had the opportunity of looking at the beautiful misty western ghats through the viewpoint. It was a completely different experience.I was went on a small walk to the top of one of the hills. I completely enjoyed sitting in the misty hilltop. Since it was raining all evening, we had to skip the evening birding but we did enjoy the rains a lot :-)
Sunday (16th Sept) 7.30 am : Now we were super excited to do some more birding. The mist clears up only 8 am. As we started our morning trek towards the Bettagiri hills, things didn't look so promising like the previous day.We were kinda disappointed with absolutely NO bird sightings. But as we were reaching the end of the trail, we heard some noise. Since it was still misty , nothing was clear. But we were quite lucky as the mist started clearing up only to find a herd of 7 elephants with a baby male too. Now this was something amazing. We were about 200 meters from them. We were so thrilled. Our guide was jumping everywhere. Apparently it was a very rare sighting in that region. They were grazing for a while and then moved away. We also found a happy Crested Hawk enjoying its early morning flight.
Here is the Jayanth's Elephant Image ..
Thank you Jayanth and Lavanya for the wonderful company. It was great fun.